Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘He, erm … he wasn’t married then?’

‘His wife had died some years before. Car accident. The Church was his life, if you could call it a life. And in the parish … the nerve of people. The way some of them reacted when they found out I was divorced! I mean, it was hardly a major scandal. One night, I said, for God’s sake, why don’t you pack in this stupid, stupid job, and let’s move to somewhere they don’t know us and start a guest house. I did know what I was doing, by the way – my parents were hoteliers.’

‘He got early retirement?’

‘After I threatened to go to the press. Overworked, overpressured, underpaid and under threats of violence?’

‘Literally?’

‘There were threatening phone calls. Didn’t I say? Untraceable these days, people make them from cheap mobiles. But … he got early retirement, and we wound up here. Not quite my idea of an idyll, but the people are OK, they don’t judge. “Bev and Rev”, that’s what they call us in the pub. We thought of having it on the sign outside, but that would be a little too cosy.’

‘He seems OK, now.’

‘I tease him about his walks, but it’s really done him the world of good, the four years we’ve been at Garway. Learned all the history, guides people around, leads expeditions, and able to keep his hand in with the church. Just our bloody luck that the vicar would have to leave and there’d be an unexpected hiatus before the next one takes over, and Teddy would feel obliged to stand in full-time. And that it should coincide, God help us, with this madness.’

It wasn’t clear whether she meant the Master House problem or the Templar service. Maybe both.

‘What sort of service is he going to give them?’

‘We still haven’t given up hope that someone else might take it on.’ Beverley looked at Merrily, eyes steady. ‘I don’t suppose …?’

‘Beverley, most of what I know about the Knights Templar I got from Teddy the other day. All he needs is an ordinary service with a couple of customized prayers, a sermon about the need for religious tolerance and … I dunno, “Onward Christian Soldiers”? Beverley, would it be OK if I—?’

‘Your exorcism service … someone prone to stress-related problems, that could be damaging, couldn’t it?’

‘Well, it … it’s been known. But in the vast majority of cases it—’

‘So if you do need an extra minister at your, whatever you call it, deliverance, perhaps you could call in another … exorcist or something?’

Merrily nodded wearily.

‘Sure.’

She’d end up doing it on her own in the dim, mould-smelling room, the atmosphere swollen with historic hostility, the Baphomet grinning in the inglenook.

‘Is that all right?’ Beverley said.

‘Of course. Would it be OK if went to bed. I’m feeling a bit …’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, you must be absolutely exhausted. It’s obviously been a difficult couple of days.’

‘Just a bit tiring,’ Merrily said.

As always when you were feverish, there wasn’t much sleep that night. Strange bed, a hard, fitness-freak mattress. Getting up around two a.m., feeling hot, and leaning out of the first-floor window. Cold air on bare arms, murky night obscuring distance so that the end of the cigarette, feebly glittering against the moonless sky, was like the tail light of a passing plane.

Before bed, Merrily had called Jane on the mobile. Jane said Siân Callaghan-Clarke had been very friendly, not at all what she’d imagined. They’d actually talked for a couple of hours, about Siân’s time as a barrister and Jane’s problems finding the right career plan.

‘Erm … great,’ Merrily said.

‘Hey, Mum, it’s not my fault she wasn’t being a bitch.’

‘I never said a word …’

‘That meaningful pause said it all.’

‘You remembered to feed Ethel?’

‘Like Ethel would let me forget? Mum, don’t—’ Small hiss of exasperation. ‘How’s it going there?’

How was it going? Merrily peered down the valley, into vague dustings of light. There was a prickling of fine drizzle now, on her arms. She pulled them in, stubbing out the cigarette on the stone wall under the windowsill, feeling cold now, and hollow and disoriented. No sense of where she was in relation to the top of the hill with its radio mast or the hidden valley of the church, the rum place where M. R. James believed he’d caused some offence.

This was not an easy place.

Jacques de Molay had located it, though.

In 1294, the last Grand Master of the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon had sailed from France, then ridden across southern England to visit the remote preceptory at Garway. According to Jane’s internet research, nobody appeared to know why he’d come or what he’d done here. And if there were no crazy theories on the net, last refuge of the extreme …

She shut the window, groped her shivery way back to bed. Please God, not some bloody bug.

Woke again, from a darkly vivid dream in which the tower of Garway church was with her in the room. The tower was standing in the far corner beyond the window, its vertical slit-eyes solemnly considering her. Guarding its secrets, knowing hers.

She sat up violently in bed, the duvet gathered around her. The moon had come out, sprinkling talcum-powdery light on the wardrobe.

The wardrobe, no more than half a century old, was roughly the same shape as the church tower and had twin vertical ventilation slits, high up in each door, black now.

You could go crazy.

Merrily lay down again, rolling herself in the duvet, turning her back on the wardrobe, stupidly grateful that The Ridge was not The Globe and the room had only one bed.

When she walked on to the square in Ledwardine, a crowd was gathering, but nobody was looking directly at her, although she was collecting meaningful sidelong glances from people like the Prossers, James Bull-Davies, Alison Kinnersley and Shirley West.

It was a deep pink dusk and the lights were coming on. Lol wouldn’t be at home, of course, he was off on a gig somewhere. So why was there a filtered light in his cottage in Church Street?

She walked across the square, getting out the key he’d given her, but she didn’t need it, the door was slightly ajar. She went in.

There was a dim light in the hallway and low music coming from somewhere, the song ‘Cure of Souls’, from Lol’s album, the one he’d written about her before they were together:

Did you suffocate your feelings

As you redefined your goals

And vowed to undertake the cure of souls …

Over the music came the throaty notes of slippery female laughter. Dripping down the stairs, like a pouring of oil, was a shiny, black, discarded dress.

Merrily, heartbroken, ran out, back onto the square where they were burning Jacques de Molay, his cold eyes fixed on hers through the darkening smoke as his white smock shrivelled up, turning brown.

She awoke sweating and shivering, no light in the sky.

MRS MORNINGWOOD, HAVING beckoned her into the window, now appeared to see something worrying in Merrily’s eyes.

‘You’re not at all well, are you?’